September 10, 2009

To attract more winter tourists, the town of Warner Pier is putting on a Teddy Bear Getaway promotion this year. Most of the retailers are participating and that includes TenHius Chocolade’s owner Nettie TenHius and her niece Lee McKinney. Besides filling the display cases with tons of teddy bear shaped chocolates Nettie has several antique molds decorating the store on loan to her by Gail Hess who owns the local antique store.

In the middle of the night Lee’s ex-stepson, Jeff, interrupts a burglary in progress. Knowing the only thing of value in the store are the molds Nettie promptly sends them back to Gail and the next day Gail is dead and Jeff is found standing over her body.

This series is so refreshing. I said the same thing about book one but I’ll say it again about this one. This is not your typical cozy. Heck there wasn’t even a dead body until about 100 pages in. The story is so focused around Lee, Nettie and other Warner Pier residents that you forget that someone is going to die and Lee is going to solve the murder. It’s all so natural.

I was a little disappointed that the relationship between Lee and Joe that looked so promising at the end of book one remained flat but I can live with that if the next book in the series follows the same unconventional cozy formula. This is a must read if you’re a fan of cozy mysteries.

It looks like I'm going to miss the 999 completion bonus date of today 9/9/09 by just one book. Oh well, I'm still completing the challenge in the next week or so, so it's not too bad. I'll just have to plan my categories better next year.